Dakota County prosecutors can go forward with drug and weapons charges against a St. Paul Park man arrested in traffic stop last February, the state Court of Appeals ruled this week.

In an unpublished opinion issued Monday, Jan. 14, the court reversed a Dakota County District Court judge’s order to dismiss the case.

The defendant, David Bryan Alfano, was originally charged in February 2012 with four drug felonies and one count of illegal possession of a weapon by a felon.

The charges stemmed traffic stop in which police found methamphetamine and a gun in a rental car he was traveling in, according to the original criminal complaint. Officers said they saw him and his companion “tweaking” during the stop, suggesting they were using drugs.

Each told police the drugs belong to the other, the complaint said.

A district court judge later threw out the charges, saying police didn’t have probable cause to search the car. The judge said the tweaking observations weren’t credible enough to merit searching the car, and that statements from his companion Alfano was traveling were taken without administration of Miranda rights.

The appeals court agreed with the tweaking finding, but said numerous other points of evidence, including outstanding warrants for Alfano’s arrest and circumstances that fit the profile of drug trafficking, bolstered the case for the search.

It said the Miranda protection didn’t apply because the companion’s statements were not self-incriminating.

Alfano has a previous conviction in Wisconsin for possessing methamphetamine.

Marino Eccher was a Pioneer Press reporter from 2012 to 2016, covering Dakota County, breaking news and creating data visualizations.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in News

The drive-through jokes are starting to get a little old at Mama’s Pizza. For the second time in two years, the renowned Rice Street restaurant in St. Paul’s North End was struck by an errant driver, and this time there was a fair amount of damage. Still, owner Tony Mudzinski said he hopes to get back open in a week...

Helmets in hand, members of the St. Paul Bicycle Coalition arrived at St. Paul City Hall on Wednesday half expecting an easy victory. A plan to install bicycle lanes on little more than a half-mile of Stillwater Avenue, a busy east-west commuter route east of White Bear Avenue on St. Paul’s East Side, drew multiple supporters and a single opponent, who...

South Washington County Schools apologized and launched an investigation Thursday after personal and transportation data on most of the district’s 18,000-plus students was mistakenly emailed to parents. District administrators were starting to investigate the data release amid concerns about student safety and legal implications that could stem from the public release of private education data. The private data was contained...

Police say a 63-year-old maintenance worker died when he fell to the bottom of a hotel elevator shaft in Superior, Wis. The accident happened Tuesday evening at the Androy Hotel, authorities said. Hotel staff and other witnesses told police and medical staff that the elevator had been malfunctioning, and that the night maintenance worker was trying to fix it. He...

For months Maplewood-based 3M has maintained a few dozen workers in the CoCo collaborative co-working space in Lowertown’s St. Paul neighborhood. Across from the St. Paul Union Depot and the Metro Transit Green Line station, the collaborative work space has allowed a window onto downtown St. Paul, and onto projects that the national brand is keeping close to its vest....